The Waves In the Mind
I've been greatly inspired by Lee Whorf's theory of Linguistic Relativity, which states that people from different cultures think differently because their languages are structured differently. It's exciting to also cosnider mathematics and programming languages as a form of communication. The AIs of the future will grow their own thinking based on the way we lay the grounds of their communication settings.
Worf proclaimed that the forms of a person's thoughts are controlled by inexorable laws of pattern of which he is unconscious. These patterns are the un-perceived intricate systematizations of his own language. And every language is a vast pattern system, different from others, in which are culturally ordained the forms and categories by which the personality not only communicates, but also analyzes nature, notices or neglects types of relationship and phenomena, and builds the house of his consciousness. Ultimately language is what holds reality together - if many of us tend to understand things the same way, this is because we all use the same language of thought.(Language, Mind and Reality, 1942)
Sharing some of my poetry thought experiments:
"Your mind is like a cat hunting; it's not even sure yet what it's hunting. It listens. Be patient like the cat. Very, very attentive, alert, but patient. Slow. Don't push the story to shape. Let it gather impetus. Keep listening."
~ The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination by Ursula Le Guin